Of degree and demand

Nearly two decades ago, my PhD adviser Stephen Berry started working with colleagues at LUMS to set up their school of science and engineering. Steve was part of the first advisory board and was joined by other esteemed scientists and engineers. Steve himself had been a distinguished scientist. He was a member of the US National Academy of the Sciences, had won a MacArthur Award and had made a name for himself as scholar and public policy expert when he led a landmark study on air pollution in Chicago and created the first 'life cycle analysis' - an approach that continues to be applied across many disciplines.

In the formative years of the school of science and engineering, Steve came to Pakistan every year and shared his experience and ideas generously. When Steve was asked by colleagues at LUMS what should a modern chemist study, he replied instantly "they should read Shakespeare". The point was not to be unnecessarily provocative, but to push scientists who spend their time in the lab to think, to read broadly and to recognise the tremendous power of creativity and imagination. When I was a graduate student in his lab, he encouraged me to take courses not in chemistry (which I had to do anyway) but in policy, social sciences and humanities. He encouraged me to spend time in the archives, to learn about how early Muslim scientists thought about heat. He believed that this would help me appreciate my own work on thermodynamics and remind me that we are all part of a long chain of inquiry and curiosity. As I look back at my own career, I would not be where I am today had it not been for this deep sense of curiosity, and appreciation of creativity, that Steve (and others like him) instilled in me.

Today, as I read the news of several departments shutting down or halting admission at Peshawar University, I am deeply unsettled. Of course, this issue is not limited to this particular university, or to Pakistan alone. But this one is somewhat personal. My father, before I was born, used to teach at the history department at Peshawar university. There is a personal sense of loss to see the struggles (and perhaps eventual demise) of that department. The cause, supposedly, is low enrollment. Enrollment, again supposedly, is tied to the job market. But there are several problems with this line of thinking. First, the purpose of higher education cannot simply be to train a person to enter job market. It may be the way some students (and their parents) think, and that may be the outcome of some programmes, and there is nothing wrong with that outcome, but that is not the purpose of higher education. The purpose of higher education is not to teach a tradecraft that is valued by the market at the present moment. If we go down that path (and some would say we are already there), we would not have any programmes in literature, philosophy, astronomy, history, chemistry, biology, art and a whole host of subjects that are not valued by the market today. The departments we set up today, and invest in, will become obsolete in a few years, and the exercise will have to be repeated. That endless cycle is guaranteed to fail and drain the dwindling resources we put in. Higher education is about creating curious, thoughtful and deeply engaged citizens who reflect on, and solve, the most stubborn issues of our time. The most serious problems that we see all around us - injustice, polarisation, inequity, intolerance and others - are not going to be solved by the latest certificate in AI. They are going to require us to train more social scientists, humanists and basic scientists who think thoroughly, read broadly and reflect deeply. Treating degree programmes as goods, that are started or discontinued because of a temporary demand, is antithetical to the fundamental premise of higher education.

I never got to ask this to Steve - but in my imagination, I have a conversation with him asking what our higher education leaders should do in this moment. In my mind, I hear him say, they should read history!